from http://www.ec.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=6F2DE1CA-1&news=CB8B1F09-BEC2-4700-82B2-7C59463FA4E4

Perhaps these groups have been at it longer than I, and so are more skeptical of the possibility that something good might be happening in Canada with respect to climate change policy. While a Minister of the Environment making claims to pursue tougher climate policy is nothing new, I saw two important changes come out in Minister Kent’s speech, and I am seeing actions from Environment Canada which I have not seen since the early days of the Harper government and the Turning the Corner plan. While I am no fan of the sector-by-sector approach, I have to give credit where it is due.

The first major change is information provision. Clare Demerse’s Pembina blog does a great job of (perhaps unintentionally) highlighting this. The first graph she shows, re-posted below, is a great example of the old Environment Canada. This graph is a poor attempt to mask the growth in Canada’s emissions since 1990 with a convenient change of scale. Of course, this type of trickery didn’t really fool anyone, but it was indicative of the efforts to present Canada’s lack of action in a more favorable light instead of taking more favorable action.

At the same time, many of us working on climate change policy in Canada got very used to seeing the screen below whenever we tried to access information on Canada’s GHG inventories, policies, etc. If you wanted a document, you had to enter your email and have it sent to you. While waiting for your email to arrive, you might have wondered “what exactly are they hiding and why?”

This all makes what was provided here by Environment Canada particularly refreshing. They provided everyone with a direct look into exactly what the economic modeling group at Environment Canada is telling the Minister and confirmed what environmental groups and the NRTEE have been saying all along – we need tougher policies to have any hope of meeting our goals (see the graphic at the top of the page). Now, Minister Kent cannot hide behind a lack of information – he has clearly been informed of the need for policies which generate at least 3 times more reductions than those they already have in place.

The second amazing thing in Minister Kent’s speech was the removal of any ambiguity about whether Canada’s government was going to re-spin it’s target – an issue that many of us working in the sector have been wondering about for a while. It may sound trivial, but we now know that Canada’s emissions target will be 607 Mt and that number will be measured in the same way as the 731 Mt inventory number for 2005. As far as I can tell, no other document published by Environment Canada stipulates this number. This unambiguous disclosure is in stark contrast to previous statements which confounded regulatory emissions (emissions net of credits granted for early action, contributions to technology funds, etc.) and actual emissions.

Now, Minister Kent is absolutely correct when he says that we should not “let anyone tell (us) that it’s not an ambitious target.” In their recent report the NRTEE found that to meet Canada’s emissions targets, a carbon price of at least $30/ton today increasing to $80/ton by 2020 would be required. By contrast, Point Carbon forecasts that Europe will meet its targets with a price of less that $50cdn (36 euros) in 2020. It is absolutely possible to meet these targets through performance standards and regulations, but they must be at least as stringent and will likely be more costly to the economy. There is no getting around the fact that to have a reasonable chance to meet our targets, performance standards must drive the same emissions reduction decisions that an $80/ton carbon price would. The NRTEE also made it very clear that we need more stringent policies than the US to meet the same target because our economy would otherwise see faster growth in emissions-intensive activities.

I do think Minister Kent will have a tough time getting these policies in place, but at least we all know what information he has, and we are now all in agreement that Canada is not yet on the right track. I, for one, am glad the Minister was willing to stand up and say so in such plain language.

The Kent speech is probably dictated by tactics and political opportunism. We keep hearing there is going to be an election in the next few months and the Conservatives position on climate change is a big negative. But they’ll find a way to get around it.

The GHG data for 2009 has to be submitted to the UNFCCC by April 15. The next day headlines will celebrate the ‘stunning’ reduction in GHG and Peter Kent will be quoted as saying that Canada has met half of its Copenhagen target (a 50-something Mt drop would mean total emissions of around 680Mt), etc., neutralizing any criticism of Canada’s inaction on climate change on a hot political year, with 7 provincial elections and, in all likelihood, a federal one.

Of course, the federal government has little to do with any of it, since the recession and the gradual phase-out of coal-fired generation in Ontario are responsible for the drop in emissions but they’ll be happy to take credit for it.

Thanks for reading. I don’t disagree on the majority of your points. Yes, the 2009 inventory numbers will be lower than 2008, and so it will be interesting to see what the government does with those numbers. It is important to note that using these numbers would make it easier for the government to mis-inform canadians as to the current state of progress against our 2020 targets or to claim credit for the short term reductions. Rather, the value of having the forecast to 2020 out in the public domain is that, if the government chooses to update their forecast numbers based on a single new point of data, it will be transparent. They will have to justify, at least within the small community of wonks who follow this stuff, what other fundamental elements in their forecast out to 2020 were changed to match the 2020 number. Hawks like Matthew Bramley will rightly take the gov’t to task if they simply shift the whole forecast path down to match 2009. I do believe that, if Kent planned to celebrate the 2009 numbers, that there would be no tactical gain in coming out with these numbers now, but as I have said many times already on this blog, I am not a political strategist nor do I try to play one on tv.

I do certainly echo your point on taking credit for provincial actions, but in this case that was not as obvious. Minister Kent did explicitly credit strong provincial policies, and those are modeled into the scenarios presented. I would love to see a repeat of the 2008 publication that Clare Demerse referenced, available here, so that these breakdowns and the underlying assumptions would be clearly laid out on the table. Environmental groups as well as the NRTEE and the Commission on Environment and Sustainable Development have called for that, so I really do hope this is coming along with the new policies we are told to expect.